I don’t think the _what_ of Palantir is arcane or difficult to understand, even at my low-level of end-user understanding.
It seems to quickly and efficiently collate every database entered, then spit out the _relevant_ connections. ‘Relevant’ is key,IMO. Also, the ability to quickly spot gaps that indicate money is siphoned off somewhere ‘untraceable’. Except, with this tool, nothing is any longer untraceable and nothing is totally destroyed.
_How_, I leave to the computer-proficient. But, as long as the operators have access to every bank transaction and whatever else they need for a forensic evaluation (and they _are_ the NSA), the result seems obvious. It’s how/why they ‘have it all’.
I’m unclear on the dual ownership/operation of Palantir. Karp is hard-core prog, but Thiel seems to posses some moral grounding and scruples. How did those 2 ever connect? We might need our own Palantir to figure that out. What changed Thiel?
So, as I understand it, Palantir follows the money and is able to quickly/efficiently weed out the exceptional interactions from the mundane and spot the cut-outs. I think speed and efficacy are it’s strengths, along with the power to handle an infinite number of inputs. The gaps are as important as the visible paths. Maybe they took the tools/methods of forensic accounting and reduced them to a software program. I know the Feds in the 60s broke a mafia operation in Milwaukee by hand with forensic accounting techniques. It took 8 years of a team going over every set of books they had by hand.
Not hard to see how this approach could be extended to movements and personal relationships, given the appropriate inputs like social media, cell phone tracking, personal messages and perhaps even keystroke logs. Maybe personal surveillance, too, like those walls of data and photos used by LEO. It’s an AI, so it could have evolved from correlation to prediction....I don’t pretend to understand that part of it, even though I did see ‘Minority Report’.
Use the ‘Foundation’ series as a template, factor in what is understood of human behavior/hardwiring (most everything)and the scope of prediction grows from individuals to entire civilizations. That’s depressing. Maybe Thiel saw that DJT is The Mule (as well as Batman)and just acquiesced to the inevitable. Or maybe Palantir made the assessment?
The real question, then, is why did it take the white hats so long? Put it another way: how did the DS grow to be so pervasive with this tech available? Only answer: it was being used FOR that growth. By highlighting key players, accessing their entire life-feed, the vulnerable are identified. Enter the perversion-fueled blackmail and satanic elements to pressure the weak and everything resolves into complete and monetized control.
When, how and why Thiel developed it and for whom and when it became a white hat op is the question.
And finally we come to what for me is the crux of all this: with every single asset at their command, over centuries, the DS wins battles while losing the war. They inflict misery compounded by disaster, all for their own glorification and reward and in the end: ‘they will lose everything’ and ‘be afraid to walk down the street’.
Did the internet allow a sort of human, wetware AI to evolve? Is the ability of millions of humans to share data, see connections and reach conclusions based on all their varied life-experiences actually more powerful than the processing power of a machine intelligence? Has the Internet sped up human intelligence? We are a pattern-recognizing species. AIs are built to surpass humans, but the template is human consciousness/thought processes. As the Book says:”We are fearfully and wonderfully made.”
To once again fall back on American TV cultural tropes: is the Machine actually our human mind-meld via the Net, while the black hats utilize a version of Samaritan, which lacks compassion or an emotional component?
Did the black hats, in developing a supreme control mechanism from the Internet, actually facilitate a quantum increase in human collaborative ability that became its own (DS) nemesis? Are we seeing the end game in the competitive call and response of human mental development/evolution?
Ok. Enough for a Sunday morning. All our math-proficient, computer engineer guys can likely explain this better without my over-reliance of science-fiction and popular culture. (And hyphenated words, along with slashes)
VERY interesting discussion. Thank you.
when it became a white hat op is the question.
Are we sure it's a white hat operation? I sure hope so.
That was a wonderful post on the subject, RL. Trump as the mule. I think so, as far as the unplanned for disruptor of the plan and like the mule, who was sterile, a one time shot.
I'm must lobbying Swordmaker to get Palantir onto his lexiQon for future reference. He says Q never mentioned it. I was hoping you could provide the link from Q post to Palantir so the information wouldn't fall down the memory hole.